Fred Zinnemann
Fred Zinnemann ( born April 29, 1907 in Rzeszów [ Note 1 ]; † March 14, 1997 in London, actually: Alfred Zinnemann ) was an Austrian- American film director.
Life
Fred Zinnemann came in northeastern Austria -Hungary to a Jewish family and grew up in the 3rd district of Vienna. His father was a doctor. In his youth in Vienna he was close friends with the late Hollywood director Billy Wilder, with whom he occasionally went to the same class and with whom he maintained a life-long contact. He graduated in 1925 at the Franz -Joseph -Gymnasium Stubenbastei and started on the interest for a musical training to study law. In 1927 he took after an initially great resistance of his parents and relatives in Paris at the Ecole Technique de Photographie et de Cinématographie a camera on training.
Since 1928 worked in Berlin, he was a 1929 camera assistant with a silent movie starring Marlene Dietrich. His third assistant camera he graduated in the summer of 1929 with " People on Sunday ", " the once famous soon outsiders production of the brothers Siodmak, Edgar Ulmer and Billy Wilder's". In October 1929 he went to Hollywood and worked as an assistant director and short film director.
He was initially Assistant to the Austrian director Berthold Viertel and learned by Robert J. Flaherty know him. This gave him his first directed the documentary " networks " ( " The Wave " ) about the exploitation of Mexican fishermen.
In 1936 he became an American citizen. In 1937 he began his work in the short film department of Metro -Goldwyn- Mayer. For his third short film, That Mothers Might Live ( about Ignaz Semmelweis ), in 1938 he received his first Oscar. In the forties he finally turned to the feature film.
During the Second World War Zinnemann was loaned out by MGM to the Swiss producer Lazar Wechsler. During this time, among other things, the Blight, which won two Academy Awards was born.
Until 1948, Zinnemann worked for MGM. Then he turned to different American studios. He retained later by self-produced his films his independence.
In 1951 he turned twelve clock noon. The film won four Oscars in 1953 and brought Zinnemann imparted by the New York Film Critics Award for the best director of the year.
The scene in The Godfather, in which a filmmaker finds his head in his bed after the beheading of his favorite horse, is to be a real incident from the life of Zinnemann. This is to Frank Sinatra, who was looking very close contacts to the La Cosa Nostra and tended to have been committed in 1953 for the film From Here to Eternity.
A typical Hollywood craftsman has never become Zinnemann. Only a fraction of the nearly six decades that includes his career, he spent in Hollywood. He is credited, Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando, Grace Kelly, Rod Steiger, Meryl Streep and other stars brought out large first to have.
Fred Zinnemann was five times won an Academy Award and was nominated a further six times. Zinnemann is considered one of the best directors of the 20th century. He died in 1997 at the age of 89 years in London of a heart attack.
In the year 2008 ( 3rd District ) of Fred Zinnemann Square was named after him in Vienna's Landstrasse.
Filmography
Awards
Academy Award (Oscar):
- Awards: 1939: That Mothers Might Live, Best Short Film ( award was presented to the production company, MGM, awarded)
- 1952: Benjy, Best Short Documentary
- 1954: From Here to Eternity, Best Director
- 1967: A Man for All Seasons, Best Director
- 1967: A Man for All Seasons, Best Picture (as producer)
- Nominations: 1948: The Blight, Best Director
- 1953: Twelve clock noon, Best Director
- 1960: Nun's Story, Best Director
- 1961: The endless horizon, Best Picture (as producer)
- 1961: The endless horizon, Best Director
- 1978: Julia, Best Director